Dear Journal,
Flight to Spain from London was a short one. My owner made a friend on the flight and I stayed powered off during the entire 2-hour and 25-minute duration. Ibiza, pronounced ‘Ee-bee-tha’, attracts nearly six million tourists a year. Not bad for 571 square kilometers (220 square miles) island with a population of around 150,000 people.
From the plane, we headed straight into our meeting. Today, we are getting together with Santiago Garcia, Head of IT at Ibiza Tech Consulting to ensure they have no misconfigured access points, and Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (WIPS) is enabled within the Wi-Fi Cloud. Deploying access points without Wi-Fi security best practices in mind can lead to inadvertent misconfigurations, which often lead to security risks.
The most common misconfiguration is leaving access point configurations set to factory defaults, like usernames, passwords, and even SSID (service set identifier). According to Gartner, the majority of wireless LAN security breaches are caused by poorly configured APs. NOT ON OUR WATCH!
We quickly log in to the WatchGuard Wi-Fi Cloud, and go through each AP. We like what we’re seeing! Every AP conforms to the correct security policies.
Overall, their wireless setup looks good, but they are missing one critical aspect of the Wi-Fi Cloud – their WIPS is not yet configured. Wondering what WIPS is all about? WIPS is a term from the Wi-Fi industry that refers to the prevention of wireless threats. The detection and prevention methods vary by Wi-Fi vendor, but WatchGuard WIPS utilizes advanced patented Marker Packet™ technology to:
- Automatically and accurately identify wireless devices on your network
- Detect and prevent rogue APs
- Detect neighboring APs external to your network
- Detect misconfigured APs
If WIPS had been enabled, we could have easily saved ourselves a trip because WIPS detects any misconfigured APs. But I get it, it’s all about relationship-building! Go Wi-Fi!
Download A Field Guide to Secure Wi-Fi–Observations From Your Laptop eBook and continue with me on my journey around the world. What Wi-Fi threat will we come across next? Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Mac